THE TEMPLE FOR INITIATED WOMEN OBJECTIVES

1
THE TEMPLE FOR INITIATED WOMENOBJECTIVES

• Promote respect for the indigenous faith and
  freedom of belief.
• Resolve conflicts between womens rights and
  practices justified in terms of cultural and
  religious norms.
• Reconcile equality claims and valued traditional
  identities.
• Give an African solution to youngsters fall into
  fundamentalism in their search for identity.
• Gather, publish, and disseminate valuable
  information that would have been otherwise lost.

2
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES PROMOTE RESPECT FOR THE
INDIGENOUS FAITH and FREEDOM OF BELIEF

• Official statistics Muslim 94, indigenous
  beliefs 1, Christian 5 (mostly Roman Catholic).
• Unofficial statistics 99,9 animists.
• Due to an inferiority complex and to the force of
  Muslim and Christian propaganda, the majority of
  the people who continue to believe in the
  ancestral pre-Islamic and pre-Christian faith do
  not dare to openly admit it.

3
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES PROMOTE RESPECT FOR THE
INDIGENOUS FAITH and FREEDOM OF BELIEF

• If today a Muslim Head of State consults the
  sacred wood, offers in sacrifice an ox or a
  bull, I have seen a Christian woman, a practising
  medical doctor, consult the Sereer Pangool (the
  snakes of the sacred wood). In truth, everywhere
  in Black Africa, the revealed religions are
  rooted in the animism which still inspires poets
  and artists, I am well placed to know it and to
  say it. SENGHOR, Senegals first President
  (1960-1981)

4
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES PROMOTE RESPECT FOR THE
INDIGENOUS FAITH and FREEDOM OF BELIEF

• Holders of the oral tradition no longer dare to
  express openly the laws of old time.
• Muslim and Christian religious leaders discourse
  against pagans and associationists rob many
  of the courage to face the apostles of the
  revealed religions.
• In Senegal, respect for all faiths is a
  constitutional principle, but nothing is being
  done to enforce respect for the indigenous faith.
• Muslim religion is openly used to justify legal
  and social discriminations against women.

5
THE TIWs OBJECTIVESDISSEMINATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE
TRADITIONAL MATRIARCHAL SYSTEM

• Matriarchy Mater ( mother Latin) - arkhè (
  power Greek), means literally Mother power.
• Accordingly, a matriarchal society is a society
  where the maternal values of caring, compassion,
  courage, generosity, nurturance, well-being, and
  fertility (or prosperity) are predominant.
• In matriarchal societies, woman is the seat of
  power, the provider of riches, the giver of life,
  the embodiment of justice (truth and fairness,
  i.e. the Egyptian Goddess Maât), the healer
  and... the Mother God (Roog in Seereer Nuut in
  ancient Egypt).

6
THE TIWs OBJECTIVESDISSEMINATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE
TRADITIONAL MATRIARCHAL SYSTEM

• O loq O yaay füsu saax it Seereer sentence
• - Simple translation literally, the borders of
  the country are traced using a branch of Yaay
  (shrub whose scientific name is Combretum
  Glunosicum).
• - Legal translation the country is governed by
  the rules of the maternal lineage Playing on the
  ambivalence of the term yaay (which also means
  mother), it is declared simply that the
  matrilineal system governs the country.
• - Esoteric translation Sorcery (heredity) is
  transmitted by the mother.

7
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES BROADCAST THE FEMINIST LAWS
OF OLD TIMES

• Although matriarchal societies are not segregated
  societies, at some point girls and boys undergo
  separate initiation rites.
• In the Seereer communities Kumax yaay no juul
  presides over the training of men initiates, and
  Jooj maad no gulook takes over the training of
  women.
• Mens initiation training is called ndut (meaning
  birds nest according to I. L. Thiaw), and
  womens initiation training is called ngulook,
  marriage ceremony.

8
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES BROADCAST THE FEMINIST LAWS
OF OLD TIMES

• This organization along gender lines existed at
  all levels.
• In the pre-colonial Wolof and Seereer kingdoms,
  national coordination was ensured at the top by
  the lingeer (elected queen/female head of state)
  for the women, and for the men, by the elected
  king (called maad or buur in the Seereer kingdoms
  buurba, brak, dàmmeel or teeñ in the Wolof
  kingdoms).
• From the base to the top, the gender duality was
  acknowledged in a way that guaranteed both sexes
  equal rights and opportunities.

9
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES BROADCAST THE FEMINIST LAWS
OF OLD TIMES

• The spiritual basis of the lingeers power The
  rule of government based on the association of a
  man and a woman is directly connected to the
  animist philosophy which puts the couple, and her
  female element, in the centre of all life.
• Sex pairs are the engine of life and the source
  of the balance on earth and beyond. Based on this
  concept, a single woman can be at the top of the
  state (in the image of the Primordial Mother, who
  gave birth to the World and to the First Twins).
  But a man cannot be elected to an office without
  a woman by his side.

10
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES BROADCAST THE FEMINIST LAWS
OF OLD TIMES

• The legal basis of the lingeers power Female
  heads of state derive their power from the
  unwritten but not less binding constitution of
  the Wolof and Seereer kingdoms.
• Those were constitutional monarchies. The monarch
  was not a king by divine right, but elected to
  the highest office of the state by an electoral
  college made up of the countrys main notables.
• The Constitution provided for the appointment of
  a woman alongside each elected king.

11
THE TIWs OBJECTIVES BROADCAST THE FEMINIST LAWS
OF OLD TIMES

• Henri Gravrand describes the legal position of
  the lingeer in the following manner The linger
  is a mandatory gelwaar (the royal lineage). She
  is appointed by the king to be his adviser in the
  government. He chooses from among his closest
  relatives, his mother, his maternal aunt, or one
  of his sisters. She may attend the Council of the
  Crown, she holds significant religious functions,
  and she exercises a rigorous rule over women.
  Her advice of a political nature were always
  heeded. (La civilisation sereer Cosaan, Les
  Nouvelles Editions Africaines, Dakar, 1983, p.
  267)

12
THE TIWs OBJECTIVESROOTING FEMINIST DISCOURSE
IN THE INDIGENOUS MATRIARCHAL SYSTEM

• Disseminating ancient African myths, laws and
  traditions honouring the role of women will
  remind all that gender equity is an indigenous
  African concept. And by promoting it we will not
  lose our African identity, on the contrary we
  will be embracing it.

13
THE TIWs OBJECTIVESROOTING FEMINIST DISCOURSE
IN THE INDIGENOUS MATRIARCHAL SYSTEM

• CHALLENGING THE MAINSTREAM DISCOURSE ON ADAM and
  EVE - In a papyrus dating from the time of the
  Ramesside dynasty (13-12th century BC) God
  proclaims I am the one who has made the
  primeval waters in order for the Celestial Cow to
  come into existence. I am the one who has made
  the Bull for the Cow in order for the joy of love
  to come into the world.(Al Assiouty, 1989, p.
  239-240).
• Jigéen ay suñu asamaan fu ñu xiinul du taw
  (women are our rainmakers Wolof saying).

14
THE TIWAN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MODERN TIMES

• Churches and mosques, the spiritual strongholds
  of patriarchal ideology (they are all managed by
  male priests or male imams), are everywhere, but
  there is not one brick and stone edifice built to
  call attention to, and muster respect for, the
  indigenous faith and its female priests.
• Seeing female spiritual leaders in a setting
  similar to that of a church or a mosque will
  counterbalance the negative impact of the lack of
  female imams, pastors or priests in Senegal.

15
THE TEMPLE FOR INITIATED WOMENA CULTURAL
RESEARCH CENTRE

• Bringing together oral tradition holders and
  researchers to develop their capacity to
  identify, interpret and nurture indigenous
  African cultural and spiritual heritage,
• Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and
  skills,
• Facilitating local and global linkages which
  support indigenous African heritage preservation.
  

16
THE TEMPLE FOR INITIATED WOMENA HEALING CENTRE

• Women and children will be encouraged to come and
  seek assistance from abusive relationships or
  discriminatory treatment by state authorities.
• Human rights associations and jurists will devise
  with the members of the temple the ways and means
  in which to most efficiently address such issues.

17
THE TEMPLE FOR INITIATED WOMEN

• An alternative Religious and Cultural Institution
  
• To Preserve, To Celebrate, To Nurture the
  Indigenous African Spiritual, Moral, and Cultural
  Heritage.